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Revision as of 21:32, 26 April 2008

Hello from Nick

Hello, Screen stalker, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome! ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 21:04, April 8, 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. If you have any questions, be sure to ask. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 17:20, April 9, 2007 (UTC)

You can just follow this link and create the page. Or you can click on the tab at the top of this page that says "user page", or you can click on your username at the very top of the screen, next to "my talk". ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 21:06, April 9, 2007 (UTC)

Palestinian Exodus

Two problems with your edits: The Atiyah quote was already in the article, further down and at greater length that makes his views much clearer and makes putting him in as expounding an Instigated-Flight Theory not too appropriate. The Walid Khalidi quotation section is in grammatical, if perhaps clumsy English. The quotes are from Khalidi. It is saying that Khalidi said that Schechtman basically made up the instigated flight theory. So I think it belongs in the article. Oh, and welcome to Misplaced Pages too. Hope you have a good time editting!4.234.12.197 23:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Point well taken on the Atiyah quotation. As for the issue of welcoming immigration, I think that is relevant to the discussion. If Arab nations said that they are willing to absorb Palestinian refugees until they saved Palestine, I think that behavior strengthens the desire of Palestinians to leave Israel. I will start a discussion on the matter and see how things go.

I would write this on your talk page, but I think you forgot to log on. I don't know who you are... Screen stalker 15:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Palestinian exodus (2)

Hi,
Could you give your mind here ? .
Thanks, Alithien 08:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Welcome

Just wanted to welcome you back to Misplaced Pages. Zeq 07:21, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

would be best if you also leave a short comment on the talk page to explain your revert. Jaakobou 21:03, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus

Hi Screen stalker. You are off to such a great start on the article Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus that it may qualify to appear on Misplaced Pages's Main Page under the Did you know... section. The Main Page gets about 4,000,000 hits per day and appearing on the Main Page may help bring publicity and assistance to the article. However, there is a five day from article creation window for Did you know... nominations. Before five days pass from the date the article was created and if you haven't already done so, please consider nominating the article to appear on the Main Page by posting a nomination at Did you know suggestions. If you do nominate the article for DYK, please cross out the article name on the "Good" articles proposed by bot list. Also, don't forget to keep checking back at Did you know suggestions for comments regarding your nomination. Again, great job on the article. -- Jreferee 17:42, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the barnstar

Dear Screen stalker,

Thanks for the barn star for the Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus article, but I fear that the page is still kind of a mess. I like most of the ideas you propose on the talk page. Hopefully they will be adopted. --GHcool 23:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I justed added a note to Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus and wish I'd have put your name in the edit summary, since you were concerned about WP:SYN and the concluding overview idea. I agree that Wikipedians shouldn't try to adjudicate maj vs minority views, but pls see my comment there. Take care. HG | Talk 19:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks also

Just to thank you for it. It was my first! I will not be able to work to much on the articles for a while, but I think at the end we will arrive at something interesting. See you around. --Jorditxei 01:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus

Sabakh el nur. I have posted a question for you on the last discussion item of Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. I hope that you will answer it. Screen stalker 14:04, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what question you have for me - I've added to the table as follows: Yes. However, there are gaps in existing policy when it comes to scholarship on some "nationalist" issues. Policy needs updating with something that (I'm pretty sure) we all agree on, hate-authors (and hate-sites) must be excluded. PS - found your question after all, tried to answer it. PR 21:49, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

PS - you had two other questions for me - please see my attempt at an answer here. I think I have an outstanding answer I was hoping to get from you, below. PR 14:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Hakim

Since you have challenged my to explain why I think a very large portion of the exodus was caused by the tribulations of war or by Arab leaders, I will attempt to do so.

Let us examine this as follows: Suppose that we accept Morris as a source (and I am not saying that we should).

1. Morris says five villages and part of Haifa were evacuated due to Arab orders. The figure you attach to this is 5% of the exodus. Note that this does not include cases where Arabs encouraged but did not order an evacuation, and is thus not representative of the entire amount of refugees who fled due to the influence of their leaders.
2. Morris says 215 villages were evacuated due to military assault. This is a tribulation of war. Armies fight one another, and civilians in the area flee. This is not ethnic cleansing.
3. Morris says 59 villages were evacuated due to influence from a nearby town's fall. Surely you cannot say that it is ethnic cleansing for the Jewish militias to have won military victories...
4. I will make no attempt at the present time to explain why the 53 villages whose inhabitants were allegedly expelled by Jewish forces were not an example of ethnic cleansing. I will, for the sake of argument, not contest these at this time as being caused by the tribulations of war.
5. The 48 villages which Morris claims were emptied by fear certainly fall under tribulations of war (hereafter referred to as ToW). What is fear if not a direct consequence of being in the middle of a war?
6. On whispering campaigns, again, I see no reason to debate. For the sake of argument I will grant those as not being ToW, at least for now.
7. The "unknown" category is very large: 44 villages (by Morris' claims). If you don't know why a village fled, that means no cause can be explicitly proven. But people left for some reason or another. Expulsion, massacres or whisper campaigns would all have been documented. This leaves only the psychological explanations: influence from fall of nearby town, fear of being attacked, etc. Actually, they all come down to fear of one kind or another. In other words, they are ToW.

If we look beyond Morris, the evidence that ToW and Arab leaders' actions led to the exodus is in the article. Read the EoF section.

As for your argument that Morris was essentially forced to become racist, that is OR. If you don't think saying that Palestinians are as innocent as Nazi collaborators is hate-speech, then I don't see why what Schechtman says is hate speech. Screen stalker 00:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Thankyou for doing that .... I'm wondering why such a roundup is not in the article Talk.

However, I don't understand any of it. "Military assault" is not Tow "causing civilians to flee" - or certainly not in Palestine. Tow (tribulations of war) is ethnic cleansing, at least in these circumstances. There are ways in which "Military Asssault" could be Tow eg where a "friendly" army retreats into a village/town and are shelled - but it didn't happen. There is an example where the Egyptian army was driven back into villages, the Faluja pocket. The civilians (and many refugees) were still there when the Egyptians withdrew 5 months later. We know the rest of that story, don't we? Another possibility is siege - but Faluja is the only significant example of that too. Tow simply doesn't stand up.

Incidentally - saying (in Talk) that people have made statements under duress is not OR. Pressure on revisionist historians can be proved, look at Pappe. Morris has done far more damage to Israel than did the virtual exposure of the Tantura massacre, Morris's academic colleague left Israel saying "increasingly difficult to live" with his "unwelcome views and convictions.". Calling it duress makes a lot more sense than "does not include cases where Arabs encouraged but did not order an evacuation" for which I don't believe there is any scrap of evidence, but is effectively part of the article.

Who says "Palestinians are as innocent as Nazi collaborators"? You're not refering to the outrageous attack on Finkelstein's mother, patently untrue, but still not retracted, are you? PR 07:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

This discussion wasn't on the talk because it's irrelevant to the issue which the article discusses. The article is intended to explore the causes of the Palestinian exodus, not whether there was ethnic cleansing against them or not. So this argumentation in the discussion section of the article would be soapboxing.

This quotation from Morris himself is where I derive his comparison of the innocence of Palestinians to the innocence of Nazi collaborators:

There was nothing “innocent,” as Mearsheimer and Walt put it, about the Palestinians and their behavior before their eviction-evacuation in 1947-1948 (as there was nothing innocent about Haj Amin al Husseini’s work for the Nazis in Berlin from 1941 to 1945, broadcasting anti-Allied propaganda and recruiting Muslim troops for the Wehrmacht). And what befell the Palestinians was not “a moral crime,” whatever that might mean; it was something the Palestinians brought down upon themselves, with their own decisions and actions, their own historical agency. But they like to deny their historical agency, and many “sympathetic” outsiders like to abet them in this illusion, which is significantly responsible for their continued statelessness.

I have posted this and many other quotations with a similar message in the discussion. Didn't you read them? These quotations are why, if we use your standards of judging sources, Morris must be excluded as "hate-speech."

As per the question of whether military assault was ethnic cleansing, there were many cases in which an assault upon a village was intended to uproot military forces. Even if, on paper, there was no Arab military force in the village we must remember that this was a war of militias; every village--Jew or Arab--was full of combatants. Even in the case of Deir Yassin--which I think was arguably the most inconceivably condemnable attack in which the Jewish forces engaged during the whole conflict--there were resistance forces in Deir Yassin which attacked the Jews. Sometimes soldiers dressed as women in order to avoid detection. And don't forget that the Irgun commander was killed before the massacre.

Even if a military assault upon a village revealed that there was no armed group residing therein, that does not automatically prove ethnic cleansing. If leaders of Jewish militias believed that there was a military presence in those villages, then the intent of attack could not have been ethnic cleansing. So before you make exceptional claims of ethnic cleansing you must at least prove that (a) there was no military target within these villages, and (b) Irgun leaders knew there was no military target within these villages and decided to attack them anyways.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I accepted your position that an attack upon a village is ethnic cleansing. Then wouldn't you agree that there was a whole lot of ethnic cleansing against the Jews during the war?

My biggest concern with regard to the use of Morris isn't that I think he is racist or a hate monger (I don't think that he is one, although I am surprised that you have not called him one). My biggest concern is that he is being misconstrued as implying that Yishuv forces were responsible for the Palestinian exodus when clearly his intent is that Palestinians bear the responsibility. Screen stalker 15:55, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I tell you what, I'm still not sure of the point of this article - that's part of what keeps bringing me back to it, hoping to understand some new and strange thinking. The discussion is obviously civil and amongst editors who respect each other. But I still find it very puzzling - how come Finkelstein has been removed, when there's 5.5 votes for him and 1.5 votes against? How come we're tolerating Schechtman, who is clearly a "blatant falsifier" (even if you reject me on the "hate-source"?).

Not sure how I've come to miss the Morris quotes from you. I'd seen that article, and it's one of the things that make me think "the guy's now under heavy pressure to cheat". His personal attacks on Mearshimer and Walt are playing to the peanut gallery, and act to diminish any point he's apparently trying to make. Their "Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 ... in 1956 ... in 1967 – all ... before large-scale US aid began flowing." is sloppy but doesn't earn a counter blast like that. It might cause you to examine the rest of it more carefully, but you'd not damn them for it.

However, you're right as regards the content and tone of the Morris clip - find me anything like that from his earlier years, and we'd have to exclude him from any trustworthiness defending Israel. Not as bad as Schechtmaan, but out of contention for anything that criticised individual Palestinians (let alone the entire ethnicity, as he appears to do there!).

I think you're wrong on Deir Yassin and wrong on what constitutes ethnic cleansing. If you tell me that a phrase so specific doesn't belong in the article, I'll take your word for it - as I said, this article doesn't make a lot of sense to me. PR 21:04, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

removing tags

Sorry, I was not aware that I was removing tags. Normally I don't do that and I will be more carefull in the future. --JaapBoBo 17:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

No problem, it was my fault. --JaapBoBo 23:33, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Misunderstanding

Hi,
There is a big misunderstanding.
So I answered you on both the talk page on the article History of Israel and Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus.
Based what is published in the article from Ha'aretz, survival of the fittest, JaapBoBo has introduced in several articles that Benny Morris called the 1948 events an ethnic cleansing.
Ceedjee (talk) 08:32, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• Ceedjee (talk) 07:21, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

What "article" can't you find ? Ceedjee (talk) 07:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

It is here. Ceedjee (talk) 07:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

but if you type "survival of the fittest" "Benny Morris" in google, you will find this too. Ceedjee (talk) 07:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Arab citizens of Israel

User talk:RolandR doesn’t seem to like the changes I made to Arab citizens of Israel. What I thought were constructive changes, he calls vandalism! I can see you have expanded on this page significantly. Please look through the recent changes and messages left on User talk:RolandR talk page and let me know your view? Best, Chesdovi (talk) 23:39, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Username

Your username appears to be inappropriate or inflammatory, as it indicates an uncivil action. Please change it. Thanks!   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 20:13, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Jeff G.

Thank you for your concern regarding my user name. The Wikilink you provided did not work.

I do not mean to sound argumentative, but I would like to keep my current user name. I like it. I am somewhat ignorant about the way things work in Misplaced Pages, so help me figure this out: were there any editors who felt threatened by my user name or otherwise uncomfortable with it? I assure you that I have no intention of stalking anyone. I came up with this name in jest, not malice. I hope you will rethink your request. Screen stalker (talk) 22:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about the bad link, I replaced it.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 22:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, but I would rather keep the username, as I said. Screen stalker (talk) 22:23, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome to Misplaced Pages!

I hope not to seem unfriendly or make you feel unwelcome, but I noticed your username, and I am concerned that it might not meet Misplaced Pages's username policy for the following reason: inappropriate or inflammatory, as it indicates an uncivil action. After you look over that policy, could we discuss that concern here?

I'd appreciate learning your own views, for instance your reasons for wanting this particular name, and what alternative username you might accept that avoids raising this concern.

You have several options freely available to you:

• If you can relieve my concern through discussing it here, I can stop worrying about it.
• If the two of us can't agree here, we can ask for help through Misplaced Pages's dispute resolution process, such as requesting comments from other Wikipedians. Misplaced Pages administrators usually abide by agreements reached through this process.
• You can keep your contributions history under a new username. Visit Misplaced Pages:Changing username and follow the guidelines there.

Thank you.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 22:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Screen stalker. I just wanted to let you know that the discussion at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/User names regarding your username has concluded. The result was overwhelmingly in your favor, so there is no need to consider changing it. Sorry for the hassle, take care. --Bongwarrior (talk) 10:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Your username is allowed

Hello, Screen stalker. While there had been some discussion here about whether your username met Misplaced Pages policy on what usernames editors can use, the result was to allow it, and that discussion has now been closed. If you would like to see what concerns were raised, you can find a link to the discussion in the archive. You do not need to change your username. Thank you. -- Is he back? (talk) 11:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

I wanted to say thank you for the compliment, but decided that your user talk page was a better place for a personal message. You are a very good editor as well with an eye for verifiability and fairness and accuracy in reporting. Thank you for your work on this article specifically and Misplaced Pages generally. --GHcool (talk) 01:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/User:GHcool

I thought this might interest you. --GHcool (talk) 17:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for calling my attention to this attempt to curtail your ability to design your own user page. As you can see, I have taken approriate action. I hope the defense goes well. Screen stalker (talk) 23:39, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for voting Keep in my MfD poll. With your help, the debate ended with "no consensus" (although a large majority voted to "keep"). --GHcool (talk) 21:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I am glad. It is your user page, so logic tells me you should be able to design it. Screen stalker (talk) 12:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Accusations

Hello,

I thought you should be aware of this - an editor has raised an accusation (of sorts) against you on Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Wikilobby campaign (specifically here). This is with respect to the whole CAMERA wiki lobbying affair, if you're aware of it. He claims you might be one of the people involved there, identified as "gilead".

Just thought you ought to know when people are making accusations behind your back.

okedem (talk) 21:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for making me aware of this. Screen stalker (talk) 01:12, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Your behind the times with your defence of Zeq, an admin has given evidence privately that the zeqzeq2 email address goes to user Zeq due to comunications he had well before this whole thing started. Should you be part of this group i have some advice for you, admit it and show that you understand why many wikipedians are very pissed off at this and accept a topic ban on IvP articles. 03:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

This is really starting to remind me of the Salem witch trials. Have you read The Crucible? If not, you should. Screen stalker (talk) 12:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the problem: admit you're a witch, and god will spare your immortal soul. okedem (talk) 13:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Man, if I were a witch, I don't think I'd agree to put up with being hanged. I think I'd much sooner use my magic to get out of the situation... Of course logic doesn't tend to work in these sort of situations. Screen stalker (talk) 13:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Insulting editors is not the way to convince people that you are willing to play nice. If you hadn't noticed playing the race card does not go down well. 14:02, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry if you found what I wrote insulting, but I think it's true. I think that there is a group of editors who have decided to pursue this isra-wiki in a manner inconsistent with common decency. I will leave it to you to prove me wrong. I think there are a lot of parallels between this event and similar historical events. Let's face it: this is just wikipedia; the ramifications are nowhere near as great as with McCarthyism, but this is an interesting case study. Screen stalker (talk) 14:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Considering that you opened a re-naming debate at 2006 Lebanon war, three days after someone using the email yonathan@ou.edu suggested that he would do just that while calling for back-up from fellow editors in this group of documents here, I'm concerned that you may be engaged in canvassing and meat-puppetry. I would like to therefore ask you, if yonathan@ou.edu is in fact an email address that you use? Thanks. Tiamut 15:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Tiamut, I understand your suspicion. It's fairly reasonable, given the circumstances. But the evidence you present is purely circumstantial. Regarding your inquiry about yonathan@ou.edu, if I wanted my email address to be public information, I would have posted it on my user profile. Screen stalker (talk) 18:11, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

FYI - arbitration on Israeli Wiki Lobbying

I have filed an arbitration request in regards to the Israeli Wiki Lobbying and attacks uncovered: Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration#Israeli Wiki Lobbying. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 16:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for notifying me regarding this dispute. Screen stalker (talk) 18:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• Wikipedian usernames editors have expressed concern over